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　　Controlling it all made sense, the argument went, when markets were rudimentary: when supplies of vital materials were limited or contractors could cheat you.

　　这种观点说的是，在市场还处于原始状态时，什么都要控制是有道理的，因为关键材料的供应有限，或者承包商可能会欺骗你。

　　As markets became more sophisticated these justifications fell away.

　　随着市场变得越来越成熟，这些理由都站不住脚了。

　　Thanks to globalisation, companies could always find new resources and better suppliers.

　　有了全球化，企业总是可以找到新的资源和更好的供应商。

　　Yet a growing number of companies are having second thoughts.

　　然而，越来越多的公司另有考虑。

　　This is most visible in information technology.

　　这在信息技术领域尤为明显。

　　The industry’s leaders were at the heart of the contracting-out revolution.

　　行业领袖们本来是处于外包革命的中心。

　　Vertically integrated companies such as IBM outsourced as much as possible in order to lower costs.

　　IBM等垂直整合的公司尽可能地进行外包以降低成本。

　　Upstarts such as Microsoft prospered by focusing on a narrow—but exceptionally valuable—slice of the pie: the operating system of personal computers.

　　新贵如微软则是专注于一块非常狭窄但价值极高的蛋糕——个人电脑的操作系统。

　　同学们关注下一句：

　　Now many startups in Silicon Valley pride themselves for being “full stack”. But re-bundling can be found everywhere, from fashion to manufacturing.

　　现在，很多硅谷创业公司都自豪地自称是“全栈”。但从时装到制造业，重新捆绑随处可见。

　　(文章终于转回到了开头的现象，开始解释为什么现在硅谷很多公司重新回归垂直整合的道路)

　　Reasons for the reversal abound, but five stand out.

　　非常牛的写作句式。

　　这种潮流逆转的原因很多，但是下面五个是最明显的。

　　1. The most important is simplicity.

　　最重要的一点是简单。

　　2. A second reason is that firms operating on the technological frontier often find it more efficient to do things in-house.

　　第二个原因是，站在技术前沿的企业时常发现通过内部做事效率更高。

　　3.第三个原因：

　　A third reason is choice: the more the market has to offer, the more important it is to build a relationship with customers. Netflix and Amazon now create their own television shows in order to keep their viewers from buying more generic content elsewhere. Harry’s, an American company that sends its subscribers a regular supply of razors and shaving cream, spent $100m to buy a German razor-blade factory.

　　Why the Netflix is mentioned in the text?

　　(A) To show the similarity between Netflix and the Amazon

　　(B) To show one reason of the trend reversal in the market

　　(C) To demonstrate the importance of the relationship with market

　　(D) To illustrate the difference between America and Germany

　　第四个原因：

　　Choice is reinforced by speed: fashion brands such as Spain’s Zara have resisted contracting out everything.

　　第五个原因：

　　And then there is a combination of old worries about geopolitical uncertainty and new worries about the environment.

　　文章最后再次谈到：

　　The renewed fashion for vertical integration will not sweep all before it. For the most mundane products the logic of contracting out still reigns supreme. And today’s bundling is less ambitious than Henry Ford’s: Apple, for instance, contracts out a lot of production to contract manufacturers such as Foxconn (though it keeps them on a tight leash). Integration is also hard to pull off: Tesla lost some of its shine on April 11th when it recalled 2,700 of its sport-utility vehicles because of a glitch. That said, striking the right balance between doing things in-house and contracting things out is clearly much more complicated than it was in the days when Tom Peters and his fellow gurus told companies to focus on what they do best and outsource the rest.

　　垂直整合的新浪潮尚不会横扫一切。对于最普通的产品来说，还是外包的逻辑占据统治地位。今天的捆绑不像亨利•福特当年那么包罗万象——比如苹果就把很多生产工作外包给富士康等合同制造商(虽然还保持着严格的控制)。整合也很难做好，在4月11日因故障召回了2700辆SUV后，特斯拉也多少有些黯然失色。虽然如此，要在内部工作和外包之间找到好的平衡点，显然已经比汤姆•彼得斯(Tom Peters)和其他大师们告诫公司应该专注于自己最擅长的事然后把剩下的外包要复杂得多了。

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